Integra Project Cleared for NoMi Far West Side

The city of North Miami has cleared the way for Integra Investments to redevelop an overgrown brownfield site into NoMi Square, a seven-story 342-unit apartment complex at the city’s extreme northwest corner.

If all goes as planned, the $118 million project at 13855 NW 17th Ave. will break ground next summer and take 18 months to complete.

The 7.6-acre complex will include a 528-foot linear park, butterfly gardens and trellises, 518 parking spaces, a pool, gym and weight room, business center, playground dog park and barbecue area. Its 3,000-square-foot retail space will consist of four live-work two-story townhome units, with provisions for a business on the first floor and living space on the second.

Integra bought the property, which had been slated for a KIPP Academies K-12 school, last December for $4.5 million. Manuel Martinez, Integra’s vice president for development, says crews have since been removing contaminants from the soil on the site by shrubbery behind a chain link fence. The designated brownfield site was once occupied by a church.

“I think it’s an exciting development and we’ve been excited by the support from the city’s staff,” Martinez said. “There’s a need for housing in Miami-Dade and also in this part of the city of North Miami.” Martinez estimated monthly rents would range from about $1,500 for a one-bedroom to $2,800 for a three-bedroom unit, with a target audience of the working middle class.

The location, while within the city of North Miami, is surrounded by Biscayne Gardens to the north and east and lies directly across from the 13-acre lakefront Mirage at Sailboat Cove apartment and townhome complex in the City of Opa-locka.

The site sits just north of the Church of God at 1695 NW Opa-locka Blvd. and three blocks from the nearest North Miami homes across 9.5 acres slated for still-unspecified development on the west side of the Joe Celestin Center and Pepper Park in North Miami.

Because of its location, NoMi Square will connect to neighboring Opa-locka’s sewer system and get its water from North Miami Beach, rather than North Miami.

Previous plans for a KIPP Miami Academies charter school with apartments for teachers faced strong opposition from the Biscayne Gardens’ Mitchell Lake homeowners’ association. After acquiring the property, Integra held community meetings to resolve community objections and KIPP Miami chose to relocate its planned K-12 free charter school elsewhere.

Martinez says that Integra held workshops with the area’s residents and described the response as “overwhelmingly supportive.”

One Biscayne Gardens resident, Lola Capers of NW 14th Ave., spoke up in the project’s favor when the city of North Miami approved it on second reading Oct. 11.

“We are excited,” she said. “You can still look out from the back porch and don’t have to look at buildings.”

“I’m excited to see some things going up in the area,” North Miami District 4 Commissioner Alix Desulme said. “The opportunities we have are finally coming.”

Some residents in the western North Miami neighborhood of Sunkist Grove, however, are impatient with the city’s progress. They point to the nearest commercial corridor along NW Seventh Avenue exactly 1 mile to the east, long occupied by a mix of transmission shops, fast-food joints, dollar stores, payday lenders and down-market food stores.

“What has the city done to benefit the area?” asked Judy Brown, president of the Sunkist Grove Homeowners Association. “My whole thing is our time has come. That corridor is still a desert.”

For the last decade, the NW Seventh Avenue corridor, in Desulme’s district, has been a litany of misbegotten plans. Ambitious attempts in 2017 to turn the corridor from 119th to 135th streets into a “Chinatown” district quickly fizzled.

The most notorious and costly effort was the Red Garden pop-up project on NW 7th Avenue at 123rd Street, bleeding $1.4 million and counting.

“Chinatown was a bust. Red Gardens was a bust. There was no accountability, and we are still paying people who owe this city,” said Brown.

Now, clear signs of life are emerging. In October, NoMi Village, a pop-up community gathering place, launched its soft opening at the old Red Garden site, with a dozen food trucks, green turf, a covered restaurant area and outdoor picnic tables. Owners are trying to finalize parking arrangements, possibly via shuttle from the Golden Glades parking area.

Two blocks south, at 12041-65 NW Seventh Avenue, Blue Road developers won conditional approval in May from the North Miami City Council to build a 20-story, 139-unit multifamily project on a site now occupied by a transmission shop, truck depot and vacant lot. It is the first such multifamily project along that corridor in decades, and the first of an anticipated series of moderate-rent developments envisioned along NW Seventh Avenue, which doubles as US 441/SR 7.